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How to build a standing desk for £16

There’s growing research that suggests that sitting down all day is bad for you so in a bid to live longer and see my sons growing up I’ve started using a standup desk at work. A few others here at NewVoiceMedia are also using standing desks.

A vari desk standing desk

I also thought I’d have a go at building a standing desk at home. I was amazed at how cheap and simple it was to build.

What follows is how to build a standing desk for £16. The following standing desk though, does assume that you already have a normal desk in place. Read on for more.

How a standing desk has helped me

Since using standing desks at work I’ve seen most of my back pain disappear. I tend to sit slouched with my back sloping in places it probably shouldn’t which causes me back pain, sometimes crippling. Since using a standing desk I’ve seen none of my usual back pains.

Standing all day though comes with it’s own set of aches and pains, so I’ve tried to seek a balance. My legs and feet tend to ache after a couple of hours but thankfully the Varidesks we use mean I can switch between standing and sitting.

How to build a standing desk using a coffee table!

I created this standing desk by simply buying a coffee table from Ikea and standing it on my current desk. Sounds too good to be true right? But it worked for me and it actually looks OK.

I got the inspiration for a standing desk from this blogabout using an Ikea coffee table. Their solution is a little bit fancier than mine though.

The desk the coffee table is stood on is a length of kitchen worktop that I re-used when I stripped out our kitchen a few years back.

I simply built the flat-packed coffee table following the useful IKEA instructions and then stood it on my desk. Hey presto – a standing desk.

Standing Desk Coffee Table

Getting the right height

The right height for me has my hands just below my elbows when typing. This means my hands aren’t pointing up as I type – a sure fire way to get pins and needles.

As it happened the coffee table on the desk was pretty much perfect out of the box. If it’s not for you then either cut some length off the coffee table legs, or add some extra length to it with surplus wood. Remember though – measure twice and cut once.

Your desk means you can’t sit down though….as you are aren’t using a laptop

The keen eyed amongst you will notice that on my standing desk I have a MacMini and that the desk is permanent (i.e. not adjustable).

This does indeed mean that I cannot sit down to work at home using the MacMini without a lot of hassle. Thankfully I also have a laptop from work and cloud computing makes it easy to share between the MacMini and my Macbook using Dropbox, Confluence and Evernote so it’s not really an issue.

In the future I may take the plunge and invest in a Varidesk (Amazon affiliate link) which is what I use at work.

It’s expensive but it means I can adjust between sitting and standing simply.

If you don’t have much of a budget and want to experiment with a standing desk then a coffee table from IKEA might just solve your standing desk problems.

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